At Last!

Today was the day.  The female towhee finally ventured into the net.  She couldn’t have picked a better day, as this morning’s banding was mainly a demonstration for a group of campers from Kearny.

Rainy Day Sunshine

It’s been raining on and off (mostly on) all week.  Two of our net lanes are now flooded.  The trees are dripping, the grass is dripping, the day campers are dripping.  Still, it’s a beautiful sight, and other than severely cramping my style, I still love rainy days.

We can’t band when it is raining, and [...]

Towhee

We’re only banding about two days a week now, and we’ve had some rain, but we’re still getting some nice birds.  Yesterday, more hatching-year birds were out and about, including this rather sparrow-looking juvenile Eastern towhee.

I’ve always liked towhees.  They are heard more than seen, with their familiar “drink your teaaaa” calls usually coming from [...]

British Soldiers and Historic Preservation

I’ve always loved history and old things, and I especially enjoy knowing what has gone before me here in my own home area.  It is everyone’s heritage – it’s who we are.  So, it took me about three seconds to join the Landmark Preservation Tour when the call went out for volunteers. The Tour is run by the Walpack [...]

What I Don’t Know!

A group of folks from Americorp are in camp until the end of August.  They will be working on several different projects – one of them will be to develop a couple of self-guided nature trails on the grounds.  Work started yesterday on one existing trail, and I was asked to take two volunteers on the [...]

Fearless….For Now

I noticed an interesting phenomenon within myself the other day, that surprised me and has me wondering how it came to be.  Apparently, I’m no longer “timid” around black bears.  As for how it came to be, I’m sure not having a serious confrontation of any kind has helped immensely!

As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, [...]

Feathered Friday

Red-winged blackbird, female.

American redstart, juvenile

Splay-footed Catbird

The minute I saw this bird in the net, I knew something wasn’t right.  Closer inspection showed that, while the bird appears to have two horribly broken and twisted legs, they are in fact not broken at all, and probably never were. 

There was no sign of injury, and no fresh breaks.  The bird’s ‘knees’ were [...]

Birdacious Banding!

With the very warm and humid weather forecast for this morning, I was tempted to cancel banding – but Cailin, a trained bander and volunteer, was coming early and it was fairly cool at that hour of the morning, so we went ahead on schedule and opened the nets at six. We were not prepared [...]

Butterflies and Bugs

Milkweed is beginning to bloom, and that means butterflies and bugs! I’ve got another favorite spot for this – this one near Crater Lake. It’s a dirt road too, and not a lot of traffic early in the morning. The nice thing is that the milkweed is along the road, so I don’t have to [...]